for more information about the library, basic fdr library.terrorist.edu. >> what are you reading this summer? up tv wants to know. ..

[applause] >> thank you for coming out here and coming inside on an especially rare beautiful day in chicago, so we appreciate you being here. my name is monia. i cover religion at the "chicago tribune." i've been here for eight years. and the different traumas and sagas that have surrounded his church, the roman catholic church, on the city's south side. but he is not just a chicago icon. he has really become a national catholic icon who really

represents social justice and other -- but other things as well in the catholic church besides social justice, especially, how priests, how clergy, how churches can really communicate and deal with the media i would say in positive and negative ways. i would say he's a model of both. the real expert is seated to my right and this is robert mccolory. and bob and i have known each other for a while because we taught together at northwestern medill school of journalism, taught students how to cover religion so that was how i got to know bob best. and then he came out with this biography of father michael flagler, radical disciple and so i wanted to interview bob in front of you here today. and, you know, my first question would be, why father michael flagler. why is he the perfect subject

for a biography? >> well, i've asked myself that same question since i started on the book. but actually there's a pretty good reason. before i got into reporting i was a chicago catholic priest and my second assignment as a priest was associate pastor at st. sebina church on the far south side of chicago. and that was from '64. anyone from here in the church. >> my grandmother. >> what was her name? >> jennings. >> i remember the jennings part. anyhow, when i got there, the church was one of the largest catholic churches in the city. over 3500 families.

it was a growing operation and had been almost since its beginning back in 1916 or so. and i knew right away that it wasn't going to be just a normal assignment because the neighborhood was beginning to change. the coming of the black population as, you know, if you lived anywhere on the south side, you know that there was a slow deliberate migration from the ghetto just south of the loop in the 1950s, moving steadily steadily block by block neighborhood through neighborhood and in 1964, the first black families had just moved into the church. so the people were in a considerable state of alarm because they had seen what had

happened in so many of the other neighborhoods, but there was a difference at saint sebina and that was the pastor your grandmother would have known him well monsignor john mcmahon had decided that we're not just going to pick up and run because the blacks are moving in. we're going to turn this into the first integrated neighborhood in chicago. and he put a lot of money, some say -- there's no official number but he put it something like $800,000 of parish money into the formation of a community organization. that might -- might create an integration neighborhood. it was an organization under the leadership of saul alinsky. some of you would know him well. he himself is one of the most controversial people in the history of chicago.

a great community organizer. and he sent his men into the neighborhood to try to organize. and when i got there, this was a booming parish. we had 11 or 12 masses on sunday, if you can imagine. we had an upstairs church and a downstairs church. and some masses were going on all the time. sometimes two masses were going on at the same time upstairs and downstairs. we had seven priests running in and running out and saying mass. it was a very, very busy place but there was this concern, and this fear. and the fear was the thing that we had to fight against was the terrible -- terrible overwhelming work of the real estate people.

who saw there had been profits in this neighborhood as well as neighborhoods north and east of us and they did a job. they would come down block by block and ring your doorbell and say, have you thought about selling your house? and then somebody would say, no, we've been here for 10 years and we're going to stay. so it's all right. you stay. i can offer you today $60,000. i can tell you -- i can guarantee it today but i can't guarantee it next week. and did you know that a black family has just moved in at the end of the block. did you know that? this would go on. this was continuing. and we were hopeful that it would work. and we came to face reality. it wouldn't work. the real estate power was too

great. fear was too great. and everything was exacerbated in 1967 when a bunch of saint sabina kids were standing in front of the community center and a few black kids appeared on the other side of the street with a gun and started -- shots several times in the crowd. one bullet struck a girl in the leg and another struck frank kelly a 17-year-old in the heart and he died immediately. well, you could see that was -- if anything was a climatic turning point. that was it. if they didn't have a sign outside for sale before, now they did. the movement now became a crescendo and everybody was gone. they were moving out. a lot of people, you know -- they wanted to support monsignor mcmahon. they knew he was a good man and many people knew his heart was in the right place.

not everybody knew that. but it was too much. and you couldn't blame them. they had to take the money while they could because they knew they were up against the organization called the organization of the southwest community. that was the alinsky group. and they did a tremendous -- it was a tremendous effort but it was tragic. by 1969 the number of families in the parish had gone down from 3500 to about 600. now, there were new black catholic families moving in who had hoped that this would be an integrated neighborhood and who themselves were very active in the osc, the organization, along

with a lot of very good-minded white folks that lived in that parish. but it didn't work. 600. i left the parish in 1971 and was probably down to about 350 families, maybe half black and half of them still catholic who were still staying there. and i left, you know, kind of heartsick because i knew what an effort had gone forth by so many well-meaning people. and i felt there's no way this huge complex, st. sabina has one of the largest -- one of the largest institutions on the south side with this great big church and this gigantic community center. it's one of the best in the city. a convent, a school, a rectory that could hold eight or nine

priests comfortably. and several buildings across the street that were owned. we owned it. we were the -- we were sabina who ran it. and there was no way they could keep that up. the costs were too much so i left kind of heartsick knowing that what would happen to sabina is the same thing that would happen to many, many, many of the churches that had already experienced the racial transition and that is, it might be sold to a baptist community, a baptist church or in many cases they just tear the thing down. it's too costly to keep up. so i left feeling, this isn't going to work. this is -- this is really too bad. now, i didn't get to the question. [laughter] >> but it was pretty interesting, the background. [laughter] >> you asked -- >> 1971, i want to point out that someone had that year in

common. is that when father flagler showed up on the scene? >> no. [laughter] >> i used to come back occasionally to saint sabina after i left for a funeral or a wedding or somebody we knew at the parish. it didn't look good at all until -- well, it didn't even look good then, 1975 a newly ordained priest named michael flagler arrived and i met him at some affair at the church and he was the -- you know, he was so typically a young eager priest. he was just bursting with eagerness, as most of us are when we come out. and i thought what a great young, eager man he is, and he will hurl himself into this work, and he will be frustrated beyond belief, 'cause there's nothing you can do.

he's got to burn out. so he took over in '75 as the associate pastor and i was continuing to see him occasionally all through the next six years. and what he was trying to do was very noble. he was trying to adapt the liturgy, the mass to african-american style with african-american chorus, choir, dancers, arts. he was doing what he could. but the pastor at that time, monsignor mcmahon had died and a new pastor was in. he was in a maintenance mode. he said don't do too much. let's not fix up too much. just let it go until the cardinal decides to close the place. and flagler is saying, no, no, no. look at this place. the potential here is incredible. so they were kind of butting heads together and it was clear

he was an associate professor so what could he do? so it was in that context that i got to know michael flagler. >> so how did he become the senior pastor? >> good question. [laughter] >> in 1981, mike was very discouraged because as i said he could get nowhere with father taylor and that was the new pastor and about three weeks before christmas of 1981, the father was eating breakfast, and he dropped dead. you're not supposed to laugh at that. but it was the will of god, obviously, and it was sudden, unexpected. he had had a couple of heart attacks previous to that but nobody expected that. at that point mike flagler was the only priest, father priest,

in the place. so cardinal cody appointed him as temporary administrator which is the normal thing to do. so mike was feeling a little -- a certain amount of -- maybe i can do something in this very short time, the very short window before they appoint a pastor. he was 31 years old at the time. he couldn't do much. and he tried to. i could tell you a number of anecdotes at what happened at the father's funeral but i'm not going to do that. it's in the book. the book covers all the things that i'm not telling you and they're even more interesting than what i'm telling you. the book is out there at the bookstore. and they got a lot of copies. it was decided sabina needed a new pastor, a veteran pastor.

and the people by then, the black population, as i say it was small, but, you know, it was substantial. they had maybe 250, 300 families, catholic black families, who had been working with father flagler during that time. so as was the couple, the priest personnel board scheduled a meeting with the parish, an open house meeting. and the members of the parish council said father we don't want you there. we don't want you there at this meeting. so he being a man who wanted to cooperate with the people, he didn't come. and they said -- he learned later that the lower -- what was -- used to be the lower church was packed and it's a very sizeable place itself. packed that night. never saw it packed like that,

with people coming in from all over the south side. and they said now what we want to do. what characteristics would you want in a new pastor? and what are the problems you have in this parish that a priest would need to be able to handle? and what are the positive things here? the people just sat there. somebody raised his hand and said, we don't want to talk about no characteristics. we want father flagler. flagler, the whole church stood up and said we want father flagler. and the personnel board was unable to continue the meeting. so they went home. they went home. now, ordinarily that would have

been a very -- certainly a very strange thing to have such a unanimous recommendation. and cardinal cody, you will remember -- some of you will remember cardinal cody, he had just closed down a number of black parishes on the south side. and he was fearful if he got in trouble with the people at sabina, even though it was a small group at the time, that it would be trouble so he appointed father flagler as temporary pastor. now, there is -- there's no such title in cannon law, but he was appointed pastor and became then the acting pastor for -- i mean -- after cardinal bernadine came for a while he was no longer temporary but he acted from day one like he was permanent and that is 30 years

ago. so that explains how he got there and how he got to be pastor. the youngest pastor in the diocese at the age of 31. >> what are the characteristics that flagler brought to st. sabina that they wanted so badly? >> those were not the characteristics they were thinking of. they wanted loyalty and the ability to work with the people and keep them calm and have a school, to be able to pay the bills which was astronomical. and the church at that time was getting a heavy -- a heavy -- a lot of money from the diocese just to keep going. father pailer had tried to fund a lot of the parish during his time with bingo. and as soon as mike pfleger became pastor he cancelled

bingo. he said bingo is the worst thing you can do. you take money from little old ladies and it isn't worth all the trouble that you have to go through. so what were the characteristics that they were looking for would be that he'd be a hard-working pastor, as many pastors in black parishes were and are. the characteristics, though, that the people were looking for were somewhat different because they had experienced things about pfleger that were different from what they got from the ordinary parish pastor. pfleger was saying, let's look at this neighborhood. the people who have moved in here, these are good people. these are not, you know, gang bangers. these are good family people. but look at the condition of the streets, the streets at racine

and 79th which is a business area. all the business -- when the whites had left, the businesses had left so you had deserted streets, broken windows, trash and a great gathering place at night for dope-selling and prostitution. and he was saying to the people, we got to get them out of here. not by calling the police and, of course, they did as most other parishes did but he was thinking along the lines that we have to do something and he was urging them to think along the lines of dr. martin luther king as many of you know if you know anything about martin luther king was mike's boyhood hero. he had seen pfleger -- had seen king march back in '66, in 1966

and he had been stunned because he had been raised in st. thomas moore parish about 2 miles west of st. sabina and he son king and his entourage marching through the streets and these people lining the streets screaming, screaming insults and throwing rocks. and he said they were our own parishioners. they were the st. thomas moore people. they were kids i knew. and he couldn't believe it. and he said this man, king, this man, king, was walking totally erect, totally unbothered, seemingly unbothered, and he said what is the strength in that man that he can walk through hell as it were and keep his -- keep himself together? he was moved by that experience to go and read up on martin luther king, and he has been a great fan of his. so he started to teach the

people the tactic of defense, nonviolent protests, nonviolent dissent. and the people were beginning to for the first time thinking along the lines of what can we do? what can we do, we parishioners? and they saw in mike a kind of leader that they had never seen before. and that was -- those were some of the things. they also saw that his genuine interest in black liturgy and his respect for their culture -- mike plays the piano excellently, and he knows music. so he knew the kind of people that he needed to lead the black choir and the dancers and they

saw him as they said a white man with a black man inside, reverse oreo sometimes they would say. >> in fact, when i go to services at st. sabina and when i tell people to go -- i tell everyone, you haven't lived until you go to a service at st. sabina, just reserve three to four hours a day to do it. but when you hear him preach, close your eyes and you can't believe there's a blond blue eyed guy standing in the pulpit. he's adopted his cadence in his speech and i'm curious if you talk to him about that and how he came to -- how his delivery style evolved? >> he says he didn't evolve any style of preaching. he simply spent his whole time

with black people and he listened to black preachers, and he says i don't try to treat like a black preacher, but he does. when you talk to him, there's a little bit of a black style even when i'm sitting talking and he's not trying to give a sermon or anything. but he has so absorbed that, and i find it's interesting. white people often get very upset about that. what's he doing imitating black preaching? and you go around and talk to black people, the black people in the parish and say, we got no trouble with that. we don't hear -- he can talk any way he wants, but he makes sense. and that's what we are looking for. and he won't admit he has tried to use black cadence and black rhetoric but you see it right

away. a lot of the people who eventually became very active members at st. sabina, you know, they said i stopped in the church one day and i sat there and i didn't know much about it and i heard this black preacher up there and he was just going at it and they said, afterwards i went up to see what he looked like and i thought what? what? i've never seen a white person do that. and that's very irritating. >> let's go back to the attitudes and they were looking for loyalty in a priest, someone who could keep the people calm and those two qualities i must admit i raised my eyebrows and i was wondering how father pfleger

reflects those qualities. >> somewhat differently. he would say -- your loyalty first is to god. your loyalty is to the people whom you serve. and he did not think that it was his duty to keep the people calm and quiet. it was his duty to rows the people up because there were evils in the community. evils in the neighborhood and it was up to them to do what they could about it it. that was -- that was part and parcel of his agenda from day one. so they began very quietly. they first noticed that the mom's and pop's doors which was only about the only grocery stores, you know -- places where you could get pop and bread and peanut butter, there were a few of them they were still there in the neighborhood. but they also featured right out

in front of everything the drug paraphernalia, you know, papers and pipes and pouches and everything you need for your marijuana stash or your heroin stash. and he didn't like that. he didn't like that. so instead of -- he talked about it from the pulpit and then he started going into the stores and saying, we don't think this is a good idea and the guy said, it's not a good idea for some people but for the owner it is. we make a lot of money on this stuff. so he'd leave and then he'd come back in a week with 150 people who would stand there in the store and outside the store and say, we want this stuff gone. and it would take a while and there would be marches and they would threaten that the community would not buy from that store and eventually it started to work, a little bit.

a little bit. those were some of the first and earliest moves in the direction of action. now, you say loyalty, you know, he sees loyalty a little bit differently than the cardinal. there's an interesting way of looking -- there's a lot of different ways of looking at church, whether you're a catholic or not. and there's a book called "images of the church" which speaks of five images -- five ways of looking at the church and the first image is church as institution, you know, and that's the way -- if somebody says, what comes to your mind when i say, "church"? people say oh, yeah the church i go to and a big church with a steeple. but church as institution is just one way. a church's institution consists

of structures all over the world. and in the case of the catholic church, consists of a man at the top over in rome and a whole line of people under him, cardinals, archbishops, bishops, priests and then down below, kind of lay people, normal -- i mean, ordinary people. and you think of laws and rules and regulations. that's the way a lot of cardinals and popes think of church first, institutions. and there's another way of looking at a church and that is a community. not -- not with people having control over people but a community of equals sort of on the model that jesus talked about. ..

his church as going out into the world and say, what do you need? what can we do? happily work with you for good? and that idea of church was heralded at the second vatican

of, know much of the history of the catholic church said it is time to start living inside, taking care of just its own people and looking not so good with pdf the rest of the world when they did that totally. but it's time for the church to begin to get its agenda set from the outside, not totally from the inside. and i think ray flickr is a representative. it is a representative of the church as servant. and the author of that book, it entered the list said those five of church, the serving's mind comes into conflict to cemex and the one really comes in most sciences church as the

institution of the diocese. the archbishop of chicago. so there's almost a built-in conflict just sitting there when you have somebody that is speaking in a kind of pathetic way and urging people to do radical things, to come out in march and two, e-mail, take time to do things to change the way the world works, at least the word they know in their immediate world. pfleger didn't get support from other priests because frankly

priests and want to get involved in that the. but the most common priests were told not to get involved. but they do the proper authorities involved. that's not the police jobs to go out. the microwave for churches and stationed dutch, but the churches there. it seems like the two would get along great. >> well, you wish they would, but his three shows, you know, this is nothing to do with it. san fran is, st. tammany, all the great people of the church who were pathetically tears. st. thomas aquinas got excommunicated. but a lot of the people who are

leaders feel like they are looking more to the people were marching orders, unless to the affordable was seems to be common for centuries. you know, it's not just that the church. i mean, all institutions has troubles with the caliphate doesn't toe the line totally, that doesn't follow the rules, that sort of thing. it's almost inevitable. but mike got into -- well, up to you quick story in the book. very early, he looked around the parish and saw that all of the billboard within the parish

boundaries or advertising cigarette and liquor. and he thought, this is a terrible thing. keep go out to go to school and all they see is lots of newsfeed advertise. so he on its own with some of his parishioners went to the liquor distributors, the big liquor distributors in the chicago area and said you can't do this. we lifted our neighborhood and that's all we have. we look to hit the neighborhoodn west and south of us, white neighborhood. they are advertising everything on the hopeless, but we are limited to the ignorant and liquor. they were told no, we take workd our -- we advertise the cigarete distributors. same thing. could get nowhere. he goes to city hall and talks to the alderman and to people in the mayor's office.

they say, we can do anything about free speech. billboards are free speech. he went to washington. he got nowhere. but he said, well, we have to do something. so one night, one night a car left at about 1130 and drove down the street a couple blocks to a billboard ban. they opened the trunk. four men get out and pulled out a large can of red paint and a large brush with an extension and the talk to the brush and painted the billboard read. then he went home. and then next few nights later they went out again and painted to more. then cars went by. nobody seemed to notice. they started painting.

one of my associates began calling downtown, downtown to the tv stations and radio stations. i live on the south side. billboards in our neighborhood are all being damaged by red paint. nothing. nothing is more appealing to the tv people looking for a story that a picture of a damaged billboard. so they would come out and take a picture. they say, who is doing this? nobody knows. this continued for quite a while over a long time. they got better at it. one of my associates learned that you can do it better if he makes the red paint with mineral water. it will stick better instead of just kind of running down and dropping on the ground.

he also had the idea that if he take the back -- vacuum can't let exterminators use to kill bugs, they have a little hose on them that you can square stuff out and high-pressure. so they got two of these and filled them with red paint. with these they could simply take the cannister out of the car and came the little short hose up and shoot the red. up on to the billboards. so that a lot of the people were doing this. a lot of the parishioners got involved in this. it became known that obviously the people in the neighborhood are upset about the billboards. one night they were going down the street, and the police car came and stopped. the cops got out. they thought, oh, this is it. , and said, what are you doing. repenting billboards because

they don't like cigarettes and alcohol. they get back in their car and drove off. the sell side became aware of what was going on. his top assistant was buying extraordinary amounts of red paint from a local pet store. the owner asked him one day. what are you doing with all this? he said kamal or painting over billboards. come and see. the guy said, oh, your the ones doing it. after that the owner gave them a big discount on their red paint. >> but eventually he was arrested for civil disobedience. >> he was caught red handed. but the owner of the billboard company. one night when they were

painting the gang had been held looking for them. he get very mad. they had an argument. somehow red paint cuts by step on his pant leg. he said, i'm going to get you. he went to the police station. the police then filed charges. he was charged with damaging property. and a year later he went on trial for damaging private property. they could have settled for a fine, but he did not want to. he wanted to go on trial and explain why he was doing it. his lawyer used something called the necessity defense. it is a defense sometimes used by civil rights people when they break the law. we had tried to do the right then. we could find no other way, and so we broke the law. that was the defense they used

when he went to court. it doesn't always work. it depends on the judge, and it depends on the jury. the jury. i went to the trial. the jury was out for one hour. i should have said mike testified. before everyone he told exactly what they had done. they had marked up about 750 billboards over a 67 month timeframe. not only in their area, but they started going downtown. they did one along the kennedy expressway that people see every day. they have expanded the work. he honestly said, we did it. here's why. we tried to do the right thing. we went to the proper authorities. everybody said no. so we took matters into our own

hands. the prosecution said, you can't do that. that's terrible. that is the slippery slope. the jury was out one hour, and they came back and voted not guilty not guilty. he was guilty. they accepted the defense. the judge said don't do this anymore. he did it. now, he got no support from the cardinal on this. can you imagine. very upset about what he had been doing. he did. that is the kind of thing that brings you into conflict with your authorities, your superiors. he says, you know, this was an

issue that was just perfectly clear to me and the people. that was, that was the beginning of a lot of things that you can read about in the book. >> now, cardinal francis george came to chicago. snc has been at the helm of the archdiocese, michael has been suspended twice. >> suspended twice. >> temporarily suspended. >> and threatened maybe two dozen times. >> for matters of civil disobedience? >> well, yes. not really. he was -- in 2002 the cardinal said the have been there long enough. you know, the rule in the diocese. and it is just a will. there is nothing divine about it. it is not in the bible. the rule in chicago was that you were a pastor for six years.

if you do a decent job you get six more years. twelve years is considered the normal amount of time by 2002 might have been in the pastor for 21 years. the cardinal wanted him to go. he said, not through here. there is much more work to be done. the back and forth. and very hot and heavy. there were meetings, and eventually the cardinal to slap him go. legend state. and then in 2008 he was suspended after he made fun of hillary clinton. many of the rubber the famous you to comment that was on television news, particularly fox news where he was giving a sermon.

he started to make fun of hillary clinton. it was about the time. he almost broke down and cried at a news conference. it was a time when people said she was putting it on. she was just -- it was a pretend cry. he got up and said, no, it wasn't pretend. she was really getting mad because she thought to herself, i am bill's wife. i have an excellent record. i am entitled to be the president. now here is this black man stealing my show. he took out a handkerchief and started wiping his eyes. well, it wasn't in good taste obviously. it was very insulting to hillary. mike says he thought he was only doing it in that church before that crowd to win, in fact, it

was found and it got out into an international audience. the cardinal suspended him part two weeks for insulting hello replan. >> about, getting involved in politics. >> yes. >> he was also an adviser. >> yes. >> i believe the cardinal ashton to resign that position as well. >> says, he did. he had already finished campaigning by that time. >> all right. >> he will, if pushed to the limit, abate. as long as he has any energy he will fight you, and he is a very, very stubborn man. >> most recent he just pennies of rather substantial lows recently house. and he'd talk about of a high above the earth? >> it is not too complicated. the cardinal decided how. apparently he had an elimination. he thought we could get him out by appointing him as president

of leo high-school which is a small all black high-school. he thought that would be good. he can stay in the neighborhood, and he could then take over. unfortunately he announce that without telling the current president and principal that he was doing that. so when the reporters ran over to see what the reaction was they said, we didn't know anything about this. so that wasn't good. that wasn't good. the cardinal said he wanted to go. he said, i don't want to go. i'm not an educator in that sense. i am not -- and i don't want to be. that led to a kind of standoff. the cardinal wanted to go. he didn't. the thing that broke the back was that on -- he had been

interviewing on public radio. it is national. on that show he said that if he was pushed to the age he very well might have to find ministry in another church, and non catholic church. well, that blew the cardinal. when he heard that he went completely insane. he suspended him because of that , not because of high. he did not mention that had started the whole problem. >> he had interpreted it as a threat to leave the church. he came back and said, i'm sorry that those comments were misinterpreted. that is not my intention. >> and there is away.

if you really par's what he said in paris with the cardinal said, they weren't seeing the same thing. the fact is, he did threaten to leave the church. he said he was sorry and had no intention to leave the church. the cardinal reinstated him with a provision which was that by december 1st the cardinal is to have in his hand a transition plan for st. so by no. what that would be we do not know. it is up to him to work it out. i asked him what he would do. he said, i haven't the foggiest. you can bet that he is going to confer with the parishioners and other people he knows. very good friends of his.

and he is determined. he is determined that the ministry will go on. and what it could be that he will ask to stay on for your were stay on for two years maybe until he is 65. he is 62 now. there is a priest in the parish, a south african priest has been there for a year-and-a-half who was asked to come. the people love him. he has some of the characteristics, but by no means all. after a year-and-a-half no one is sure that he is the one who would be best suited to fit tissues. there is nobody, nobody that can fit his shoes that i know of. it would have to be a very, very unique kind of person. >> there are huge shoes to fill.

the book is called a radical disciple. i had hoped to reserve some time for questions, but we are out of time. if you have some we will remain up here to speak with you 1-on-1. >> well, back in july at 926, five years ago this month, this country was celebrated sesquicentennial inhering texas thing mentioned it was quite a big deal. but in fort worth texas, festivities were over shadow i political, religious business.

catalyst of this particular battle, the issues are both public, personal and citizens found themselves polarize. contact that experiences, others. on july the 17th, 1926, a documented pretty well connected to the movers and shakers of the town went to pay a visit on a local customer. this is not just in the past year. far from the typical man of cloth to this day coming as a multifaceted personality with a religious empire. presided over the largest protestant congregation in america. in many ways, he was a regular country radio broadcasting pioneer in the political taboo in newspaper, an emerging leader in the with fundamentalism.

the businessmen are decrypted creature the language led to foreconscious come in three which struck the businessmen. soon, police arrested him a lens and not a local hospital is deeply dishonest rest. the preacher was the right thing, to john franco morris, well-known s.j. fracas from the texas tornado or too many in fort worth simply as that name. the story of a path of that day six monsters to go with blakely with a call of the most famous story you've ever heard. in the story reached all right here to austin because eventually the trial of this

decade, take it up with some famous trials course auckland on saturday and so forth, this trail was one of the most captivating at the time. but a footnote. unlike the folks in his story and made has ever received its full treatment. the context of courses the 1920s, which i've always found to be a fascinating time. it was a time when the world changed, when here we have just the last living soldier of world war i, 110 years old was. it arlington national military. very few are we see every day from the generation of world war ii. in the 1920s, people came back to work part-time and have a

change you and influence for what they saw in europe. if you know about the 1920s, when is this tremendous wreck mission in manners and morals. they are sort of cast enough restraints. you have one encoding to another lot of them in the. you have the revolution that goes on. you fault the media, radio scores has become a very popular medium and is becoming the media today. movies come in the industry at around a few years, they really reached its -- got its traction in many teen 20s. and along with that collect celebrity, with andy warhol would describe that last that long before that in the 1920s and sports figures come call first and baseball players.

you have this reaction to that revolution. and it was described with an odd word explained by warren harding who ran in 1920 when he said he wanted to get back to what he called normalcy. there is no such word. he was the first republican to make up for it. he wanted that to the way things used to be. that resonated with them and the values they hold are changing. so they had a number i cannot say i cared what was a fundamentalist. we hear about the republic will subjugate. we usually think of is associated an awful lot with terrorist the court saw through christian county using evangelicalism.

but fundamentalism was the reaction to the modern world and to be janice geological change in the mainstream protestantism. it became obsolete cultural and cared it was something for people to get involved with. it's hard to imagine today, but it is such a pervasive and in the 1920s theme is baltimore journalist said in the middle of the 1920s if you were to eat an egg anywhere in america, you're bound to hit a fundamentalist and i had. it was much more of a religious cultural reaction to the way things had changed. another movement that was very big in the 1920s and certainly here in the state of texas was the ku klux klan. it has seen a revival.

there is many kinds of cessation at the time. many of them marginal, that the emergence of that particular movement or of course during reconstruction. in 1915, there is a regrouping of the plant had been attended coming to the 1920s, this group, very patriotic, very pro-america, the anti-democrats, it anti-foreigners kind of thing really takes hold of the coulter. and for a moment in time, davis said wending together of a lot of the commonality here at the ku klux klan. this was something evangelicals have a difficult time acknowledging. they've had a difficult time acknowledging it was in fact part of the past. >> you can watch this and other programs oni